Friday 4 June 2010

A TASTE OF SAKI

It had been many years since I exposed my soul to the caustic brilliance that is the writing of H.H. Munro, immortally known as 'Saki'. Yesterday evening, even through the fog of a tired brain further enshrouded by the vicissitudes of commuting, I began reading The Unbearable Bassington, and was instantly refreshed, through all parts of my being, by the playfulness,wit and elegance of his prose. It was like literary mouthwash.

Here's the opening:

In her younger days Francesca had been known as the beautiful Miss Greech; at forty, although much of the original beauty remained, she was just dear Francesca Bassington. No one would have dreamed of calling her sweet, but a good many people who scarcely knew her were punctilious about putting in the ‘dear’.

Her enemies, in their honester moments, would have admitted that she was svelte and knew how to dress, but they would have agreed with her friends in asserting that she had no soul. When one’s friends and enemies agree on any particular point they are usually wrong. Francesca herself, if pressed in an unguarded moment to describe her soul, would probably have described her drawing-room. Not that she would have considered that the one had stamped the impress of its character on the other, so that close scrutiny might reveal its outstanding features, and even suggest its hidden places, but because she might have dimly recognised that her drawing-room was her soul.

There is another link to Capuchin in one of the two favourite theories as to how the author's pseudonym was chosen, namely that it is a reference to the South American primate of the same name, 'a small, long-tailed monkey from the Western Hemisphere', that is a central character in 'The Remoulding of Groby Lington.' The other contending explanation is that the name was chosen after the cupbearer in the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, a work satirised in 'Reginald on Christmas Presents' .


David



4 comments:

A Bookish Space said...

I've never read any Saki but that excerpt sounds wonderful!

Hannah Stoneham said...

I love Saki and his short stories make such wonderful "handbag reading" for buses and tubes and waiting at stations etc -

Max said...

My love of Saki's style and powerful insight was always tempered with a slight wariness that he must have been an embittered cynic if real life - most likely a deeply unpleasant person. But this does not tally with his peculiar death wish in needlessly joining up for the pretty fruitless slaughter in the WWI trenches. Must get a biography...

Max said...

My love of Saki's style and powerful insight was always tempered with a slight wariness that he must have been an embittered cynic if real life - most likely a deeply unpleasant person. But this does not tally with his peculiar death wish in needlessly joining up for the pretty fruitless slaughter in the WWI trenches. Must get a biography...